


Ring of Keys and Other Stories V: Confessions

by seaofolives



Series: Ring of Keys and Other Stories [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Confessions, Crushes, Declarations Of Love, Foiled Confessions, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Baze Malbus, Pre-Canon, Pre-Rogue One, Puppy Love, Unrequited Crush, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-23 10:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10717584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: Set in the younger days of Baze Malbus and Chirrut Imwe, when high school crushes were all the rage.





	Ring of Keys and Other Stories V: Confessions

**Author's Note:**

> Please forgive the use of real life foodstuff in a Star Wars fic.

Being a Guardian of the Whills, one must always look to the Force as an example to model oneself on. It was perfect, graceful, subtle even in its power. 

And being the most devoted Guardian of them all, in training though he still was, this was a lesson Baze Malbus understood only too well. Although the beauty of the Force was not something he could realize completely, at least not in his lifetime, he was still determined to take anything that the Force would be generous enough to share to him. Grace was easy—with proper discipline and diet, their bodies could be honed to dance to the music of the Force. But subtlety, that was a different trial altogether. 

Especially if one required it to confess one’s feelings towards another. More so if that person was none other than his best friend, Chirrut Imwe, who was probably one of, if not _the_ most observant person he had ever met. 

He was the reason why Baze had had to go all out of his way just to set his plan in motion. There was a cherry tree growing out on an abandoned lot towards the eastern face of NiJedha, just a stone’s throw away from the lip of the natural mesa. He and Chirrut had discovered it once during a field trip, when they’d broken off from their friends in search of entertainment. At that time, it had been young and skinny but years of being left to its own devices had fattened it up and laden its lush canopy with bright, red fruits. Baze had been worried that the fast growing industrialization of the Holy City would have required its sacrifice but he also knew that it wouldn’t be long until it would be forced to make way. 

What a sad day that would be when it came, Baze thought, as he looked upon the shaggy sentinel which was more foliage than trunk. He had to send out a prayer of thanks to the Force that he wasn’t yet too late when he flicked open a small knife he’d nicked from crafts class (he would return it before the teacher caught him, he swore) and set to work, driving the tip of his blade in scratch by scratch. After that, he ran back to the direction of the Temple of the Kyber. 

It was an hour later when he returned with company chasing after him. “Come on!” he cried back to him.

Baze raced him to the side of the cherry tree, just under its full roof and turned to see Chirrut picking his way up the slight slope that would soon be leveled once a building claimed its place. The younger man fell forward with a graceful stumble, scrabbling at the earth in a sort of half-crawl for balance. “Old man! Tired already?” he teased. 

“I was doing chores before you found me!” Chirrut hurried towards him, tripping a little on the way. He reached out, aiming for Baze’s shoulders and arms.

Baze gripped him by his elbows instinctively to steady him. He was laughing. “Old man!” he jested again. 

Chirrut glared at him. They tussled briefly, each hand and kick landing in the air or in a block, no one quite managing to grapple the other to fling them to the ground. They stopped, breathless and laughing. 

“So what?” the younger man gasped, all smiles now. “What did you want me here for?”

 _Just you,_ Baze realized with a slight and delightful surprise. It made his heart flutter, in a way that only Chirrut could whenever the popular boy chose his company over anything. He was up here alone with the one who held his affections. He felt so important. He could think of so many things they could do, things they could talk about, so many games they could play. 

“Look at the bark! I wrote something there.”

“What?” Chirrut turned towards the dark trunk. “Where?”

“Just there!”

“Where is it?”

“Look closer!”

Chirrut shuffled towards the tree, leaning, eyes squinted. There were several times that Baze’s heart stopped beating when he thought his friend would spot his work but Chirrut kept looking. He would often raise his hand as if to feel the wood but at the last minute, he would always put it back to his side. 

“Look down,” Baze advised. 

Chirrut did. He peered a little closer, then broke out in a grin. “Chirrut and Baze were here,” he read. Actually, it was only supposed to be _Chirrut & Baze_ but panic attached a small _were here_ just under the second name. Okay, so maybe it was _too_ subtle. 

Chirrut appreciated it happily all the same. “You’ve left our marks!”

Baze prepared to lie. He had put together some speech about NiJedha’s growth and how he wanted to tell the world they’d been there before the chance was taken away. 

“But why is your name under mine?”

Well, he certainly didn’t expect that criticism. And he doubted he could explain that when he began, he’d wanted to enclose their names in a heart. His thoughts stammering, Baze only shrugged, unseen though he was, and said, “No reason.” Damn observant Chirrut! 

“We must always be together,” Chirrut decided with scholarly authority, nodding in agreement to his conclusion as he straightened up, hands behind him. “Our names must always be next to each other, in the same line. We are sworn brothers. We stand as equals.”

Baze remembered the time he and Chirrut had playfully picked up a pair of willow branches and pledged fealty to each other to the same tree. They were much younger then, still children, but though the years had passed, no one was yet backing out on an oath that wasn’t meant to be so serious and permanent. 

With half a shrug, Baze acquiesced to Chirrut’s observation. “So I’ll find another tree and carve it in the correct way.” That would give him another excuse to write Chirrut’s name—and his name beside it. 

Chirrut looked back to him and smiled brightly, clearly equally pleased by the prospect. Baze could feel his heart swelling and his ears burning. It was difficult not to smile back in the same way. “I’d love to see that,” he said. He looked upwards towards the bountiful canopy. “It’s too bad there aren’t any fruits, though…”

“Fruits?” Baze blinked, then craned his head up to point at the blushing bunches overhead. “There’s lots of them right here.”

Chirrut hurried beside him to look up the same way. “Oh…oh, oh! You’re right, of course.” He laughed. “Shall we eat them together?”

“What?” Baze sputtered, snapping to the shorter man who stared back at him in the same heartbeat, eyes as big as the cherries themselves. He’d almost repeated the question back to Chirrut but just the thought of mentioning it to his crush was enough to set him on fire. But even still, he had to say something because Chirrut looked like he was expecting him to thaw the ice. 

As a natural defense, both broke out in a boyish laughter.

⚭

Eating cherries together.

Weeks have passed since. Now it was nothing more than an old joke, the newest of many, shared between two dear friends, unspoken— _never_ spoken of—but one look is all it takes to set them both cackling and snorting. 

Even the comfort and protection of Baze’s solitude were not enough to stop its intrusion. In his quiet hours, when he was supposed to be memorizing his verses or preparing his mind for his prayers, he would suddenly chuckle and grin like a fool. In fact, these days, just the thought of his friend alone could do that. A little mental discipline was all it usually took to ask Chirrut to sit at the back of his mind while he finished the task at hand. 

And then it rained one day, one of those big, gigantic ones that only happened rarely. Baze was ecstatic and went off to find his best friend to share his excitement. 

He spotted him in one of the outer, higher gardens of the Temple, soaked to the bones but he wanted to finish his forms. The other disciples had given up, hurrying out of the rain in squeals, passing him with barely a nod of respect. At any other time, he might have had a mind to speak to them about this behavior, no matter if he wasn’t all that much older than them. 

But he was too entranced to care about politics just then. They say that people often loved someone who reminded them of another loved one—perhaps a mother or a father. But the one Chirrut reminded Baze of was the Force—beautiful, everflowing. He knew that if the Force ever became a person, Chirrut was how it would look like. The way he curled his fingers, twirled his hand and spread it out like a flower in spring. The way he reached for the rain and spun to its beat. The way he arched his body. 

Chirrut ran to him after his final salutation, laughing while Baze chided him for his stubbornness and foolishness and ordered an urgent visit to the bath. He embraced him tightly, frantically rubbing warmth onto his back and into his arms while he dragged him inside. Ever since then, he could dream of nothing but Chirrut’s laughter, and the shape of him in his arms. 

Now he carried a basket full of cherries under a white cloth while Chirrut rambled on about his duans on their way to one of the training rooms; there was something he wanted to try, he’d said. The last time Baze tried to confess, he’d been too subtle and worried that the message would not be acceptable. Now, he wondered if he was being too forward, even though the official story was that he enjoyed the joke too much. 

“...so once I reach my next duan,” Chirrut turned to face him as they stepped through the threshold, “we’ll be together more often.”

Together more often. That sounded like a dream. 

“So is that what this is all about?” Baze asked, setting the basket next to a rack of fighting sticks. Across the half-open double doors was a set of windows looking over the sprawl of NiJedha where walls would have stood. The afternoon sun set the polished, patterned floor gleaming like a mirror. 

As he collected a pair of staves, Chirrut took his place in the middle and wrapped a length of fabric across his eyes, his silhouette surrounded by an aura of the sun. Baze wondered if there was anything this man did that was not impressive, and if he really wasn’t handpicked by the Force for all his inherent elegance. 

“This is something else,” Chirrut said, turning slowly to the direction of Baze’s voice. He stretched out a hand. “Staff.”

Baze pressed one to his calloused palm. Doubts anchored his lips to a suspicious frown. “Are you sure you wouldn’t much rather get an Elder to walk you through this? Someone with more experience.”

“You trust the Force with your actions but not yourself?” Chirrut laughed, backing away. “How can you be a true Guardian if you cannot trust your own vessel?”

“You speak like a book of verses.”

“I trust the Force.” Spreading his feet, Chirrut aimed the top end of his staff to his friend, who imitated his form at the opposite end. “That’s why I covered my eyes. I want to see if I can do it.” He grinned at the pun he made. “Talk me through the forms. Like you do with the younger classes you assist.”

“I thought you trusted the Force?” When Chirrut refused to honor the jab with another, he had no choice but to begin. 

They went through the forms in order, moving around each other at such a careful pace that would have made it seem like they were practicing a difficult dance—which Chirrut may as well be. His brows met, tight with concentration, under his plain blindfold and he had such a frown on his face that it seemed as if every step he made was a violation against his very reason for living. 

This was quite unlike the man in his dreams—who even under the mercy of the weather moved as if the rain had been summoned by him and no other. Baze knew it was the blindfold that threw him off. Sightlessness could do terrible things to one’s balance. Even Chirrut’s breathing was graceless, mindful where it should have been natural. It improved a little towards the end of the session, when he could predict when their poles would meet and turn his closest ear to the sound in time, but it was still ragged. 

Was Baze worried? He couldn’t say he wasn’t but he couldn’t say he had reason to be either. There was logic behind Chirrut’s mission that anyone in the Temple was sure to understand. But Baze could not shake off the impression that Chirrut walked on thin ice. That the price of Chirrut’s failure was much higher than he could see. 

By the time they had finished, the light beyond the windows had burned to a golden glow. Soon a rosy, purple dusk would be among them. Baze remembered the basket of cherries he’d brought along as he returned the staves to their stand. He cheered up a little. It would be good to make Chirrut laugh, again. 

“Hey, Chirrut. You hungry?” He spun to look at his friend. Chirrut stood frozen, off-center in the room. His blindfold was off, and there was an alarming look on his eyes that Baze could not have predicted but felt so easily across the distance. 

Fear. 

Chirrut stared at where Baze once stood, looking so much like a boy faced with a nightmare. If one didn’t know Chirrut all too well, one might have thought that there was a bug that disturbed him, but Chirrut was devoted to preserve the lives even of pests—for they, too, were a part of the Force. That the object of his horror was invisible only served to alarm the man who loved him, even more than he already was. “Chirrut?” he called to him, hurrying to his aide. 

He was within Chirrut’s reach when the younger man looked up in shock. There was something about his eyes that had changed that Baze couldn’t quite put his finger on—but then he smiled. And everything but Chirrut’s smile faded from his memory. Fingers reached for each other and entwined themselves. Baze gripped him tightly. 

“I’m here,” he reassured him, savoring Chirrut’s relief. “I’m here.”

⚭

“But that’s what I don’t understand,” Chirrut spoke suddenly. “If permanence is a myth, then what proves the law of entanglement?”

They’d come a long way from the war Baze had waged that morning when Chirrut woke him up with a roach dangling helplessly by its antenna. He’d insisted then that he wouldn’t forgive and forget but there they were, walking side by side down a corridor, him juggling a pair of peaches the size of his hands, that would lead one to the prayer room and another to the Elders’ quarters. Dusk had fallen and the automated light panels on the walls, upon detecting their movement and the time of day, came on slowly with a soft honeyed glow. This was the usual scenery that greeted them beyond the training room after what Baze had come to call as their Blind Sessions. Progress was kind to Chirrut; several meetings after the first had honed the man to be sharper and faster in spite of his challenge. 

But Baze still worried. This was no initiative that came from the Elders, cascaded through their networks and their comms. Chirrut refused Baze’s offer to invite their teachers to see his growth, insisting that he only wanted to do this with him, and him alone. Honor was quick to fill Baze—until he noticed that it was not so much that he was Chirrut’s undeniable favorite, but that Chirrut had become cagey about his motive. 

Even to him, his own best friend. Chirrut kept a secret from him, even as he let him, and only him, in one. 

He hoped the Elders could help him. He was at a loss; guilt curdled his bile just at the thought of him confessing his unease, breaking his promise to Chirrut but nothing killed him more than seeing the same haunted face on the man he loved the first time he’d taken off the blindfold.

These days, Baze was always trying his best to cheer him up. He did the same now. And it would be good to be distracted from the sin he was about to commit not long now. He raised a brow, and asked, “Why do you ask that?”

“Well—” _Don’t mind if I do,_ Chirrut may as well have said. He always loved to speak of the Force and all that it affected. Raising two fingers that touched at the tips, he drew swooping brush strokes in the air until each had parted, one to each side. He explained, “—it is true and proven that two entwined particles, when separated even at opposite ends of the galaxy, will continue to be altered and affected in the same way as the other. As if they were never parted. That being the case,” his fingers swam in the air once more to be reunited with each other, “how could permanence be a myth when we have two elements that will always be as one?” 

Baze had to remind himself that he was not in a conversation with the most perfect pair of hands he had ever laid eyes on, and that Chirrut was not speaking about the two of them. “Well, I think,” he stopped juggling (he’d actually long stopped juggling for the opportunity to watch Chirrut move) and cleared his throat, buying time to collect his wits, “I think…that there must be a law or a theorem that we’re leaving out here.”

Chirrut twirled his hands again to make fists, then moved both to the small of his back. Matched by a pensive pace, he turned to face his elder brother. 

Baze burned instantly at the attention, a heady mix of its source being Chirrut and the pressure he was laying on him. “Y, you must be mistaking me for a text book!”

“It’s hard to see the difference in the dark.”

Baze swung a fistful of peach at Chirrut in retaliation who bent back in the same heartbeat, leaving a wide gap between himself and the offending hand. At the next, those nimble fingers which he’d just earlier admired enclosed upon his sleeve in a death grip that broke open his fist. The peach rolled off and landed smoothly in Chirrut’s free hand while he ducked and spun to the direction of a corridor branching out sideways. Man and fruit bounced in happy meeting, although the man put on a shit-eating grin for good measure. 

“I’ll see you at dinner, Baze!” Chirrut waved and started backwards to the prayer room at the end of the path. 

Baze was too busy flexing his stunned fingers and waving his hand, trying to regain some sensation in it, to return Chirrut’s goodbye…but mostly, he was also too busy pretending he was upset and not actually fighting off his own grin and failing miserably. Perhaps it was true that even if Chirrut beat him to an inch of his life, Baze would still be too drunk with adoration to avenge his pride. He loved watching him move as much as he loved watching him, period. That slender form, that long arm, those broadening shoulders of his. 

But he did come up with a plan for revenge when he remembered that he still had one peach left—and by revenge he meant an excuse to engage Chirrut’s attention again. Because clearly, he couldn’t wait for dinner. 

“Oi, Chirrut!” He didn’t wait for the man to turn before he pitched the round fruit with a force to attack. Chirrut had tensed to receive it, and for a second, Baze wondered what sort of acrobatic splendor the man was going to grace him with again. 

So imagine his surprise when Chirrut’s acrobatic splendor sent him crumpling to the floor after the projectile landed with a clear smack on his face. 

He might have ripped his throat to pieces when he roared his name, or beaten the speed of light when he dashed to his moaning friend. “Chirrut!!” Panic echoed on the quiet walls. No doubt one too many droids would have heard it and reported it to an Elder. A grand mixture of worry, horror, shame and hysteria gave Baze confusing signals; he wanted to cradle the bleeding man for there was suddenly so much blood but he didn’t want to joggle him in case they were dealing with a concussion. He couldn’t see it so well, Chirrut was hiding half his face in his hands. “Chirrut…!” he wheezed, tears coming on. In a spark of inspiration, Baze grasped his shoulders to steady him before he did himself more damage. “Chirrut, I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” Chirrut groaned, his voice stuffy and his own eyes leaking. “It’s okay. Just call the medi-droid, please. My nose is broken.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” Baze was wheezing while he fumbled for his comm piece to send out an alert. 

“Baze, please, call the medi-droid.”

“I just did. One should be on its way. You’re going to be fine, Chirrut. I’m here.”

“No, I’m fine! You don’t have to stay here.”

“Chirrut, I can’t just leave you!”

“Baze, please!” Chirrut was crying, voice high and thin with fright. “Just go!”

It stung—more than Baze could ever imagine, could ever be prepared for even when he knew he deserved more than that. His body was frozen. He could sit still and pretend that he wasn’t there but he couldn’t just leave! 

Fortunately for the both of them, the coveted droids had arrived to sort out the mess before Baze could make the wrong decision. Chirrut was carried onto a repulsor lift and escorted to the med lab with haste. 

Baze remained where he sat on the floor, next to two peaches the size of his hand.

⚭

He couldn’t come up to an Elder to spill Chirrut’s secret after what he did. The guilt was bad enough—but now he couldn’t imagine betraying his best friend after what he’d done.

He didn’t see Chirrut at dinner, couldn’t find him no matter who he asked. He skipped his own prayer, reading and meditating hours because he couldn’t focus on anything other than his dear friend and was practically stuck in the dinner hall like a ghost lingering between life and the Force. 

It was late in the evening when one of their Elders told him that Chirrut was having his dinner in the kitchen. Baze ran. 

By the time he had reached the massive room, a wide circle doused in bright, golden lights that was filled with panels, machines, fresh produce and polished surfaces, the kitchen droid was already collecting Chirrut’s dishes and he was refusing seconds. 

Baze had not yet formulated his apology when he crept next to Chirrut drinking his tea and sat down near him on the looping bench. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Baze?” Chirrut asked the room, and everything went still. The question repeated itself to him in weak echoes. Guilty, Baze couldn’t give an answer.

So Chirrut’s hand darted next to his knee and found Baze’s fingers. They gripped each other, like tethers in a storm. That was the only time Chirrut turned to face his friend. Baze had to stifle a wince when he saw what laid across his best friend’s face, a silver band of sorts with its own quiet lights, meant to prevent infections and further damage to the already wounded nose. 

But Chirrut smiled, and all was well. The gesture was slight but it spoke volumes to Baze’s heart, enough to melt away his guilt.

“You don’t look so bad,” Baze said suddenly, even though his face looked swollen and the bruise was creeping up to his eyes. The kitchen droid wheeled back in and placed fresh cups of tea and a steaming kettle for the two friends. “I was really worried about you…there was so much blood.”

“They say my nose will heal in three weeks,” Chirrut reassured him, looking embarrassed but still cheerful. His voice had a nasal quality to it, mixed with the effects of his medical band, like it had gone through several channels before it cracked out of a comm system. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Does it still hurt?” Baze whispered, a hint of dread in his voice as he crept closer.

Chirrut tested his cheek. “A little if you touched it.”

Baze sighed, drawing back. He appeared discouraged even though they both knew how these injuries worked. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…I didn’t know why I did that.”

“It’s not your fault. It was an accident,” Chirrut responded quietly. “I know what you were expecting me to do. I tried but…” he shrugged, “I might have had one too many peaches.”

“That ought to teach you to stop stealing peaches from your elders.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Baze growled and Chirrut laughed. Too bad it was short-lived, cut out by a wince and Chirrut touching his cheek again. Baze frowned, drawing his eyebrows low between his eyes. 

“It hurts to laugh,” Chirrut explained with a voice that asked to be excused for being such a killjoy. “So you better not make me laugh until it’s all healed up.”

“That’s going to be difficult.”

Even Baze surprised himself with how much he meant what he said, how much of his heart bled out to those quiet words. The kitchen seemed to still itself, anticipating the silence that could only come from so much honesty. Chirrut’s face remained impassive, but he kept his eyes averted from his friend. If he blushed, the lights hid it well. 

The Force strike him but Baze wanted to kiss him so badly! He didn’t realize how full those lips were until the absence of words—for Chirrut loved to talk—stopped them from moving. 

Maybe he would do it. He inched closer. He just had to put an arm around Chirrut’s back, move in slowly so Chirrut would know what he wanted to do and could speak up if he so wished. Just the slightest touch just enough to feel those lips on his…

“Don’t make me smile, too,” Chirrut ordered him. His voice popped Baze’s balloon and sent him falling back to reality, where he hadn’t noticed that Chirrut had been fighting off a grin. “It also hurts to smile.”

Well then, it would probably hurt him to kiss his lips, too. 

Baze couldn’t say he wasn’t disappointed…but at least they were still friends. Eloquence left him, it was the price he had to pay for dreaming about Chirrut’s lips in front of the man himself. The Force probably thought that was very rude of him and saw fit to punish him this way. 

He tried to recover with a shrug. “For what it’s worth, I still think you’re—” —handsome. That would make Chirrut smile. Baze bit his lip hard. 

Chirrut turned to look at him in some sort of expectation. But when Baze refused to continue, he understood why and turned away from him again, facing forward. With a decisive nod, Chirrut said, “Say it to me when I’ve healed.”

Three weeks sounded like a long time, but maybe then, he’d have sorted out his feelings properly in a way that would allow Chirrut to receive them easily. With a nod of his own, Baze agreed.

⚭

A week later, the swelling had gone down—so Baze was alarmed to find out that his best friend had gone to see a doctor.

“Did he say where? Or who?” he’d asked one of their common friends who’d told him the news when he came to call on Chirrut that morning. He’d filched some freshly steamed maple cakes from the kitchen, a shared favorite of his and the younger man. That Chirrut appeared to have left in a hurry—for he had not even thought to leave a message in his comlink—worried Baze who thought this must be some sort of an emergency. He wanted to follow and make sure he was okay, that he had a friend when he needed one the most. 

He received no suitable answer to his question, however, and was left with no choice but to wait for Chirrut’s return. 

Baze dropped by to check on Chirrut again mid-afternoon. This time, he’d just caught the man as he was leaving his room. He raised the bag of maple cakes that was supposed to have been their breakfast as his greeting. Nothing in the world would have prevented that smile from splitting Chirrut’s face ear to ear. 

“So what did the doctor say?” Baze asked, chewing down a mouthful of cake. They sat by one of the Temple’s outer ledges, feet dangling in the air, overlooking sprawling NiJedha. It was exactly the kind of place that would earn them a night in the detention room if they’d been caught. 

Chirrut coughed and cleared his throat with some sweet tea. “Doctor? Said who?” he popped another cake in.

“Wany.” Baze frowned. “I’d gone to look for you this morning.”

“Must have mistaken me,” was Chirrut’s easy conclusion, shrugging. “I was in one of the quiet rooms, meditating. I had a dream and I wanted to reflect on it.”

“Ohhh?” Shifting closer until they were elbow to elbow, Baze nudged his friend and whispered conspiratorially, “What did you dream about?”

Chirrut only looked at him, smiled, and stuffed a maple cake in Baze’s mouth.

⚭

A week later, Baze chanced upon Chirrut hanging kneeling pads in one of the outer gardens of the Temple, just one level up from where he had been chiding a pair of younger girls for causing mischief on one of their older teachers. Giddy with excitement, he might have called this meeting fated.

He put his hands side to side of his mouth and whistled. Chirrut looked down, and he waved. 

He wondered if maybe his eyes were fooling him, but Chirrut hadn’t raised his own hand in response before he returned to the task at hand. Baze tried again but was met with the same cold response. 

“What?” He couldn’t even put his confusion to proper words. Chirrut could hear him but how could he not see him? He’d been tempted to try again, this time with his name, reproach from the Elders be dammed, but Chirrut had picked that opportunity to leave. 

“What in Jedha’s…!” Frustration bubbled up from within Baze’s chest. How could Chirrut not have seen him! It made no sense at all. It wasn’t like Baze stood against the light, in fact he stood in a position where he would have been more easily noticed from above! It was almost as if Chirrut was…

Realization dawned slowly on Baze, but still too fast for his liking. He didn’t believe it at first, and knew that the chances he could be right would be staggeringly low with so little evidence. But how could he have thought of that…if he had no reason to?

⚭

A week later, Baze could no longer keep his silence.

There could be no subtlety this time, and there can be no guilt. He wondered if he should have at least tried to hesitate when they hailed a speeder that would take them to the edge of NiJedha but it was hard to consider it when every distance that separated them from the Temple of the Kyber, from safety and comfort, was something he rejoiced. Because it meant that finally, there was no going back. He would have no choice but to do this. 

After their lectures, just before the sun was about to set, they’d taken a detour to the market to buy half a watermelon to share between themselves. They raced each other to the most number of seeds spat over the edge of the mesa, a contest Chirrut won unanimously, and sat back in blissful satisfaction, trading stories and rumors and gossips. They were comfortable. 

Baze seized his chance when he started to get scared of ruining the moment. He jumped to his feet gaping at the skies, then jabbed a finger up at them with all the strength he could muster. “Chirrut, look at the size of that thing!!” he cried. 

“Where!” Chirrut got up after him, searching the horizon. “Where?”

“There, over there! It’s so huge,” Baze gasped, shaking with excitement. He ran past Chirrut in an effort to follow it with his outstretched hand. He stood back when Chirrut took chase. “You see it? Look at it go!”

Chirrut stood gaping, and then finally: “Yes, I see it! You’re right, it’s so big.”

The sound of Baze’s heart breaking, under the weight of so many sudden revelations. Now he didn’t know what to do. He’d exposed Chirrut but what for? What then? Should he even have tried? 

“What do you think is it, Baze?” Chirrut asked, eyes still on the empty skies. Was that a hint of desperation on his voice? 

Baze wanted to embrace him. Baze thought about pretending that the lie was not a lie. “I don’t know…a ship?” He tried anyway, for what it was worth. He threw his voice but he could no longer put his entire being in it. This was all a mistake. “It looks like a freighter.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Chirrut said. Baze flinched. “I wonder why it’s so quiet, though…”

Finally, the truth. Baze breathed a sigh of relief, even though he knew that the worst had only come, perhaps to ruin them once and for all. The growing silence seemed only to draw a raging river between them. 

Slowly, Chirrut turned back to look at him past his shoulder. “There was no ship…was there?” he asked, voice quieter than the wind.

Baze shuddered at its frostiness, like a brisk wind had passed. He shook his head, then added conscientiously, “No.”

Chirrut frowned. “That was a very cruel trick, Baze.”

Baze wanted to crumble like the rocks of Jedha, right where he stood. But he nodded, and said, “Yes.” Not even a day into the relationship he so wanted, and he was already experiencing the pain of hurting the one that he loved. 

Chirrut’s steps made scratchy echoes as he turned around to face Baze finally. He looked pale, all of a sudden. Baze had never seen him look so...unhappy. “How long have you known?” he asked. 

“Since you’ve been lying to me,” Baze said. He wished he hadn’t. Chirrut looked stung but they could no longer allow themselves to be complicit to falsehood. “About the blindfold and the time your nose broke. About seeing the doctor…” Now that he spoke of them out loud, he couldn’t believe he’d missed all the clues when they were just there, waiting to be seen. Baze had to wonder if things would have been much better had he realized the signs sooner but he thought it was impossible to say. Maybe things wouldn’t change, or maybe things could have gotten worse, much, much worse than his imagination could prepare him for. Like what was happening right now. “How bad is it?” he asked. 

Chirrut refused to answer, casting his gaze down to his feet.

Baze couldn’t take it anymore. He marched up to his silent friend and reached for an arm. “Chirrut, how bad is it—!”

“Nearly!” Chirrut snapped, snatching his wrist from Baze’s grasp, stumbling back with his momentum. Pain was the artist that etched his features, his face a canvas for his frustrations and his fear but the tears would not come. He gritted his teeth in a bid to be the master of himself. He glared at the dirt between himself and his friend. He could not look at him. “I’m nearly blind,” he snarled. The final admission. 

Was this what Baze was expecting? Maybe. It should have felt good to be right, to finally know the truth, to have reached the bottom of the well. 

Baze wanted nothing more than to disappear, though. To be gone from that moment, to be back in the market when he and Chirrut were out-haggling another humanoid who wanted their half of the watermelon. At least Chirrut had been happy, then. Mischievous and playful. 

“I can,” Chirrut choked, raising a hand to an invisible wall, “I can barely see past my arm anymore. And even then,” he sniffled, “even then it’s coming closer.”

Baze tried to imagine it. To have this wall of blackness close into you, day by day and there was nothing you could do about it. No power. No help. No friend. He tried to see himself in that position, standing at the top of a cliff, a heavy nightfall devouring all that he loved. No matter how much he shouted, how much he prayed, it would keep coming. How could you defeat something you couldn’t touch? 

He came close to Chirrut, his feet shuffling loudly in the empty afternoon. NiJedha was somewhere behind him but he’d forgotten all about its existence. A hand rose to press itself against Chirrut’s outstretched palm. Their fingers parted and curled around each other. 

“I’m here,” Baze said to Chirrut’s sad countenance, hoping to comfort him. “I won’t be far. I won’t let go.” Chirrut nodded, simply so he could make some sort of reply. “What did the doctors say?”

“That it’s hopeless,” Chirrut said. “That I’ll go blind in months…weeks.”

“What did our Elders say?”

“Trust in the will of the Force.” Finally, Chirrut looked up to him and that was when he saw it. Some parts of his eyes…had gone milky white. That was what he’d seen back in the training room, when they’d first tried the blindfold. “It’s not that I don’t believe them anymore, or that I no longer believe in the Force…but I wish that it was not all that they say. I’m scared, I don’t know what to do! I’m alone in this fight.”

“Is that why you never told me?”

Chirrut smiled a little, sad and small. “I thought that if one less person in my life, the most important person in my life, didn’t know about my eyes, I could still pretend that it was not happening. If I’d told you, I’d just as well admitted to myself that I was going blind.” He shrugged. “I should have realized that the most devoted Guardian of them all would find out soon enough.” That was a joke. Baze knew Chirrut was just trying to lighten things up. 

If anything, it just made him want to kiss him more, this noble fool whose struggling spirit would not lose its mettle. He restrained himself with the back of Chirrut’s hand, pressing his lips to his knuckles. It was the first test, maybe, of Chirrut’s acceptance of his affections but Baze wasn’t even thinking about his own heart now. Chirrut’s comfort preceded all of his. “I was…coming up with all these ways…to show you how much I’ve come to love you. Writing our names on the cherry tree, picking the fruits because we enjoyed that joke too much,” they both chuckled, “stealing maple cakes…but I kept sending the wrong messages because you couldn’t see.”

“I wish I’d seen them all,” Chirrut said, making Baze’s heart beat a little faster. “I would have enjoyed tormenting you, playing dumb.” For once, a grin broke free from his sadness when Baze snorted and frowned. “I would have driven you mad. That would have been a sight to see.”

“That plan wouldn’t have worked,” Baze grumbled. 

“No,” Chirrut agreed quietly, his thumb stroking Baze’s finger where they touched. “No, it wouldn’t have. The most devoted Guardian would have seen through my ruse.”

So that was that, then. 

In Baze’s obsession with making the right moves, doing all things at the right time, he never did imagine how Chirrut might respond. That it might have been possible that they were both nursing the same kind of love for each other. He might have been disappointed to find out that there was no breath of relief, no burst of a song or mad whooping. But this quiet admission was how it happened. And Baze was fine with that. Now, he was just glad that the last secret had been spoken, and there was no need to hide anything from each other, anymore. 

They drew closer. Baze pressed his lips upon each of Chirrut’s fading eyes, then kissed him on his forehead, like a pledge of his devotion. His arms wove around Chirrut’s sturdy form just as Chirrut had sealed him in his own embrace. Far beyond them, a bruised dusk began to swallow the golden sun. 

“What do you think should I do?” Chirrut asked suddenly, voice small and quiet. He tightened his arms around Baze. 

Baze did not answer immediately, even though he knew all along what he wanted to say. “Trust in the will of the Force,” he said, “when you’re ready.”

“I like the sound of that better,” Chirrut said after a thoughtful pause. 

“I know the Elders always taught us how bad fear is, but we’re only mortals. We can’t always be immune to fear, which clouds our minds and our hearts and our judgment.” It was fear that led them to where they stood—the fear of the truth, a truth mishandled. Baze could see it all now, and he was gladder for that. “Give yourself some time, Chirrut.” He kissed his forehead again. “And I’ll be here.”

“It’s sad,” Chirrut said. “The days where I can still see you and look at you with my own eyes are numbered. Soon I might forget how you look.” A bleak face of the future. 

Nevertheless, Baze could find the will to assure him, “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”


End file.
